


without you I feel lost at sea

by AlexZorlok



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Fluff, In which ross x rachel isn't endgame so she leaves to france after all, Long-Distance Friendship, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, Platonic Relationships, this is very self-indulgent and projected because life is hard on alexz in 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27477745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexZorlok/pseuds/AlexZorlok
Summary: Life is hard on Joey in 2004.
Relationships: Rachel Green & Joey Tribbiani, Rachel Green/Joey Tribbiani
Kudos: 38





	without you I feel lost at sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Without You by Avicii.

Life is hard on Joey in 2004.

It’s not only that he doesn’t have neighbours anymore— although sometimes he finds himself crossing the hall without a second thought, his pace cheerful, and a low humming of a tv show tune pouring out of him. Then he has to stop himself nose to the door. The first few days after Monica and Chandler’s housewarming he could stand there for nearly an hour, just moping with his forehead pressed to the hardwood door. Sometimes he would audibly groan. Not exactly on purpose— but it would still get Treeger to come by him with a side-eye. He wouldn’t say much. Joey likes to think that he gets his misery.

It’s not all bad. Sometimes, when there are lazy days, and Joey doesn’t have an audition to attend — which happens, for better or for worse, less frequently now that he’s found himself a new agent, — he drives to the countryside to visit Monica and Chandler and the twins. On the better weekends he even spends a night; the Joey room is cozy and warm, and the only thing there that isn’t quite as good as his own one back in New York is that he’s not allowed to sleep naked lest he forgets there are children behind the wall.

It’s not all that bad in the solitude of his own apartment, either. The Chick Jr and the Duck Jr are as good roommates as he could wish for; that is: they are loud and they get in your feet if you don’t pay enough attention and they spill water everywhere when taking a bath. Joey loves them. The only disadvantage is that both of them have years and years ahead to reaching the legal age, so in the end Joey drinks all of the beer on his own.

Then, at some point over the evenings, Joey’s eyes will inevitably fall onto the door of the second bedroom — unoccupied at the moment, as most of the roommate candidates find the obligation to co-parent two feathery children too much of a responsibility, — and his face falls when he opens it and finds it empty, without even a single dirty book or a pair of expensive shoes in sight.

Life is harder on Joey in 2004 than it has ever been before, his pathetic fall — both literal and metaphorical — of 1996 as Drake Ramoray on  _ Days of Our Lives _ included.

When he wakes up, the room is pitch dark despite the curtains being up, and it takes Joey a solid minute to get a hold of his mobile phone — he knocks it off the nightstand in his first sloppy attempt and then slides half of his torso onto the floor just to grab it from under the bed; — when he checks the time, the bright numbers on the display tell him that it’s 3.27am.

He blinks at the time a few times at first, trying to comprehend what that even means for him. Then rolls over until he’s laying on his back, staring at the empty ceiling, an arm holding the cellphone hanging down the side of the bed. The screen is still lit, and he almost dozes off with its artificial warmth surrounding him. It’s when the light disappears that he jolts awake, actually, and presses the button on his device one more.

3.29am.

He doesn’t think all that much about his next actions. It’s not like Joey to overthink things, generally, but his mind is also still hazy from sleep and the darkness of the room, and there’s only one thought circulating in his head, only one word connecting him to the world as he does the quick math that Ross has taught him about the time difference and presses a few more buttons on his phone. He can’t say that he’s completely awake, not until he hears a surprised voice on the other end of the line.

“Rachel.” he breathes out.

“Hey.” she repeats. There’s a smile in her voice, now that the surprise is mostly gone, and Joey sits up on his bed more comfortably, a smile of his own spreading across his lips. “What’s going on, buddy?”

“Wanted to see if I can catch you before work.” he finds that this is the truth, partially, even if it wasn’t a fully conscious decision. Usually, when he gets a chance to call Rachel, it’s already during the workday, catching lunch breaks, or right before she goes off to sleep. Never when her voice is still filled with the scent of a morning.

“That you did.” Rachel muses. Joey can’t see her, but he imagines her walking around the room, getting ready, maybe stopping in front of a mirror to fix her hair. There would be light turned on, and the sun shining, and the mental image of that alone makes Joey forget about the deep night in his own room. “I’m just waiting for Emma’s babysitter to arrive. Oh! Do you want to say hi?”

“Sure!”

There’s a pause in the conversation, just a moment of heels knocking distantly against the floor, and then Joey hears the muffled sound of Rachel’s voice talking to someone else: “Emma, it’s your uncle Joey! Will you say hi?”

“Hi Joey!” 

Joey feels a rush of joy run through him at the mumbling voice of the little girl, his own childish name sounding like the most adorable kind of gibberish, coming from her mouth.

“He-ey!” and, as if feeling that Rachel is about to take the phone back: “Hang on a moment!”

He turns to the side, the phone still pressed to his ear and listening to the silence and occasional baby hums within it. He rummages on the bed with his free hand, getting ahold of Hugsy — the ‘new’ one, as they call him. He’s given the old one away to Emma when they were going away; Rachel convinced him that, this way, they’ll be able to communicate through them, as if the soft stuffed penguins are in any way telepathically capable. Still, Joey likes the thought.

“Hugsy says hi, too!”

He briefly presses the phone against the side of a penguin’s head, makes a quacking sound next to it, and then quickly returns it back to his ear, quite proud of himself.

He expects to hear Emma’s tiny exclaim of surprise in response, but what actually comes from the other side of the line is even better.

It’s Rachel’s laugh. Light like the very spring air, just over a whisper, and Joey can almost see her face, with eyes closed and teeth showing.

Joey chuckles back, a wide grin stuck on his face, and warmth spreading from his ears to the tips of his toes, no blanket needed.

“Hah...” he echoes.

“We hear you both very clearly.” Rachel says, only her voice is deeper now in this comedic way, and Joey knows, just  _ knows _ that she is pressing her own Hugsy against the phone and handing it to Emma.

“Bye, Joey!”

Joey throws a quick soft-voiced ‘bye’, and then speaks up again the second he thinks Rachel must be back on the phone:

“She sounds so big already, I can’t believe it! She’s saying words!”

“She’s almost two years old, of course she is.” Rachel huffs. “I can’t believe it either though… The last time I put her on the phone with Ross, he refused to end the conversation until he got her to say some of his academic...things. Which I wouldn’t be surprised if she did, but never tell Ross I said this, or our daughter will be forced to start preschool  _ real _ early.”

Something catches up in Joey’s throat at ‘our daughter’, even though he knows who she’s referring to. It is true in a way, though, it’s their little Emma: his, and Rachel’s, and Ross’, Phoebe’s, and the Bings’. Not every child is lucky enough to have so many parental figures looking out for them.

“...but what are you doing up, Joe? It must be so early back in New York… Four in the morning or so?”

“Three.” Joey confirms, automatically, the brightly lit display number still fresh before his eyes. “...Eh, the night hours are when life really happens!”

“Joey, you can’t do this to yourself! Beauty sleep is important for an actor, you can’t tell me you don’t know that!”

Joey whines into the phone but doesn’t really say anything, so, after his little cry is over, the line goes silent. Without Rachel’s voice keeping the room alive, it gradually becomes dark again, right before Joey’s eyes. He cuddles Hugsy to his side with the one arm that isn’t holding the phone, and the sigh he lets out must be loud enough for it to go through to Paris.

“...Joe?”

If he does hesitate, it’s only for a moment. It’s not like Joey to pretend to be some big strong man who doesn’t get sad or lonely; he’s blunt, and his emotions are out in the open. He hates hiding himself from Rachel of all people, anyway, not after the hug they shared at a restaurant table, years ago, hands clinging to each other. He wouldn’t be able to hide from Rachel when she’s on the other side of the world, and he’s speaking into the quiet of his empty dark room.

“It’s hard on me,” he starts, finally, “not seeing you everyday.” he lets the sentence hang in the air for a couple of seconds before continuing while the words still roll so easily off his tongue: “Some days I wake up and go down to Central Perk to meet with Phoebe. And Mike says something— Just the other day he said... Ugh, I should start writing these down! And don’t even get me started on Ross! I usually can call Chandler immediately, right there, and he’ll make up a joke for you, but… I should really start writing a list of  _ all _ the weird things he sometimes brings up over the day. Rach—”

“I know.” Rachel says, a sad smile in her voice; and this time Joey doesn’t feel the sunlight and fresh Paris air of her room— instead it’s like she’s here, with him, in the darkness of night-time New York, sitting on the edge of a bed in a guy’s cheap apartment. “I miss you too, Joey.”

Joey tugs the corner of his lips into a sad smile of his own, shrugging. “I know.”

“Emma and I will visit by the time of her birthday— It’s in under two weeks, you know? And you better get a good role by that time so that Emma knows what a wonderful, talented uncle she has! You won’t get your audition if you don’t sleep.”

Joey breathes, counting.

“I can do two weeks.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He scratches the back of his neck, sheepish, feeling a little embarrassed by getting so upset. Two weeks is nothing. For Rachel he’d wait for far more than that.

“...Ah, I need to get going, Joey!”

She says something more, something about exasperating clients and coworkers and bosses, and there is so much feeling in her voice, but among all of that also genuine excitement and ambition.

It’s all good, he thinks.

“Have a good day!”

Rachel tells him the same, and, before Joey has time to hang up, probably just as she’s closing the apartment door behind her, or at least putting on her coat, she adds, voice teasing:

“I love you.”

Joey hasn’t had a night this good in weeks.

“I love you too.”


End file.
